The company previously filed at a price range of $10 to $12 a share and it still plans to offer 57.7 million shares. In April after a round of financing investors valued LendingClub at $3.8 billion. Now its valuation is estimated to be about $4.69 billion, higher than the original $3.6 billion assessment. It is scheduled to price on Wednesday and then should start trading on Thursday 11th December.
LendingClub is one of three Bay Area companies planning to IPO this week. The two others are Hortonworks, a big data company, which hopes to raise $96.6 million and New Relic, an enterprise software management startup, which aims to raise $95 million. These companies are expected to price on Thursday and to start trading on Friday, the day after LendingClub. LendingClub’s IPO could be the second-biggest US IPO of the year, exceeded only by Alibaba Group Holding’s $21.8 billion offering in September.
LendingClub’s shareholders stand to enjoy massive gains after the float. Its biggest stakeholders are Norwest Venture Partners (16.3% of outstanding shares), Canaan Partners (15.7%), Foundation Capital (12.7%), Morgenthaler Venture Partners (9.2%) and Union Square Ventures (4.4%). These stand alongside notable shareholders from the board – including John Mack, former Morgan Stanley CEO, who has 2.4 million shares and options, and Larry Summers, former US Treasury Secretary, who has 1 million shares. LendingClub’s founder and CEO, Renaud Laplanche, has 14 million in share options.
This price rise is also a positive sign for OnDeck as it is planning on raising $150 million next week. The success of the LendingClub IPO is likely to have a direct impact on OnDeck’s listing.
LendingClub’s IPO is being widely touted as a milestone for the peer-to-peer industry – bringing added validity and a substantial profile boost to the sector. A wide range of investors are now piling into the space and the IPO should serve to grow this interest.
